


Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love

by RedemptionByFire (steelneena)



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: F/M, The soulmate AU no one asked for, dale being willfully ignorant because he's romantically traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 05:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11844828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/RedemptionByFire
Summary: There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.BuddhaSoulmates cannot lie to each other, but Dale's history gets in the way of realizing just who his soulmate is.





	Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lynzee005](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/gifts).



> for Lynzee005 because everything I write about these two is for her.
> 
> Some lines direction from the Season 1 script, ep 4 I think.

When Dale first met Caroline, he thought it was fate. He was going to lie, to tell her something he knew he was disallowed because of work, but something stopped him, and instead he told her the truth. And then, when he told himself he would lie to her about how he felt, again, something stopped him. He wasn’t a compulsive liar by any means, but he knew as well as anyone else that lies were a part of life. Until you met your Soulmate.

His parents hadn’t been soulmates, but that hadn’t stopped them from being desperately in love with one another. Dale, though, had always been a dreamer. The kind of intimacy that being unable to tell a lie would create…that was what he desired above all else. A true, real and implicitly honest relationship. There was some debate as to whether it was an inability to lie to their soulmate, or if a person literally lost the desire to do so, and science couldn’t confirm which, but the security of that level of intimacy was beyond his ability to fathom. It was the highest form of regard that two people could hold for each other and Dale wanted it.

Dale thought he’d had it until the day that Caroline died. _“Everything is going to be okay,”_ He told her, on impulse, after she asked about the seriousness of the situation. The words had sunk to the bottom of his stomach like a rock in a pond the moment he’d uttered them. In the confusion of being stabbed and the following recovery he almost forgot that the woman who had died – the woman he’d loved, another man’s wife – hadn’t been his soulmate. He’d only been deluding himself, pretending because he’d _wanted_ it to be her. Desperately. Caroline had never mentioned, or even indicated anything of the sort, and in retrospect, Dale felt he should have known. Should have seen the truth, rather than allow himself to live with his head in the clouds.

As he lay in the hospital bed, the lovely blue of Caroline’s eyes floating in his vision, Dale vowed he’d never let it happen to him again.

* * *

It had only been three days since Dale Cooper had come to Twin Peaks.  Audrey waited for him behind the pillar in the hallway, listening as he made his way to the dining room again for breakfast. She greeted him and only half cringed inwardly at her first disastrous attempt at flirtation, but he asked her to join him again, and as he passed her when walking towards the table he spoke.

“Audrey that perfume you’re wearing is incredible,”

Inwardly, she preened. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes I do. Please have a seat. And would you write you name down for me? Here,” he handed her a slip of paper and a pen.

“Okay,” She acquiesced, not thinking much of it, taking her time on the signature she’d long ago perfected to the most professional nature she was capable.

“Audrey there’s something you’d like to tell me,” The Agent said, his words phrased as a statement, rather than a question. In his hands, he held the card that she had slipped him and her heart both spiked and fell at the same time.

“There is?” She played innocent, coy, trying to keep up their earlier flirtation. But Special Agent Cooper, it seemed, wasn’t to be deterred.

“You slipped this note under my door the night after last,” He stated, matter of fact, holding her gaze effortlessly.

She felt like he was melting her away to nothing and immediately she had a lie at the tip of her tongue but - “I wanted to help you,”. The truth felt light and liberating as it floated through the air, and she continued. “For Laura,”

“You and Laura weren’t exactly friends,” She felt like she imagined the criminals he interrogated would when caught under his watchful gaze.

“We weren’t friends but I understood her better than the rest,” The truths just kept flowing and the more she explained, the more she wondered why she thought to lie in the first place. It felt natural to tell him her every truth. Natural to be honest, when she was so used to lying to people like her father. But Special Agent Cooper wasn’t anything like her father… She tried to write it off, but it felt different.

“Audrey, that rightward slant in your writing indicates a romantic nature,” They were leaning in close to one another then, and Audrey dismissed her every doubt. “A heart that _yearns_. Be careful,”

She was flustered, thrown totally. Dale Cooper was far different from anyone she’d ever met before and he was _hers_. Audrey could feel it. He cut their discussion short when they noticed the Sherriff heading over, and despite the revelation, despite the inner joy she felt in just _knowing_ that such a man was for her, a certain unease came too.

 _“Police business”_ he’d said, dismissing her, though not unkindly. How could he ever really be interested in her, she wondered, just eighteen when he was already a man, and a dashing, FBI Agent at that? She resolved to stay quiet, to let him realize for himself that he couldn’t lie to her any more than she could to him. To realize that they were meant to be, determined forever by fate.

His warning rung in her head. But be careful of what? He hadn’t already realized. If he had, she felt he would have told her. But there was a difference between not telling something and lying. And lies of omission were the only ones soulmates could tell. Be careful of her heart, because it’d get broken? Audrey didn’t have the faintest clue. Their brief talk had planted a seed in her mind. She would help him in any way she could. She would prove herself, all the while giving him ample opportunity to discover what she had for himself, and then, _then_ , they would be together.

But the days passed and Dale seemed as blissfully unaware of their connection as the day he’d arrived. He never lied to her, not once. She expected that he’d realize it the night she snuck into his room, naked in his bed, under his sheets, breathing in the scent of him on the pillow before he’d arrived, and leaving plenty of her own behind. Instead, he’d been the perfect gentleman, never once realizing what was, in Audrey’s opinion, staring him in the face.

It wasn’t until after he told her about Caroline that she understood.

It wasn’t that he was obtuse (all evidence was to the contrary of that to be certain) it was that he didn’t want to see it. He’d believed that she was his soulmate, loved her so dearly and too late learned the truth. And to protect himself from love and in turn loss, he’d ceased to even see the possibility. Her heart fell, but it only served to reaffirm her determination that he should realize it for himself.

“Friendship is the foundation of any lasting relationship,”

He looked up at her in surprise. “It's nice to be quoted accurately,”

After a moment, she steeled herself, and chose her words carfully. "Well let me tell you something, Agent Cooper; one of these days, before you know it, I'll be grown-up and on my own. And you just better watch out,”

“Okay Audrey. It's a deal,”

* * *

The first time he realized that he’d told Annie a lie, it sent such a shock of anguish through him that he missed an entire block of their conversation. He’d let himself get caught up in her, in the possibility of her, despite everything he’d learned from his experience with Caroline and it had crept up on him like a lioness on her prey. He put it out of his mind initially, but by the time their date on the boat came and went (he’d floundered through the conversation, uncertain how to respond to her in the midst of his realizations about just what he was seeking all while he knew that Windom was nearby) he had finally come to terms with the fact that all they would have would be a brief connection.

When he told her, more than a little heartbroken himself, she’s only smiled that same, sad smile of hers. She’d known that they weren’t soulmates. Just like Caroline.

Alone in his room that night at the Grand Northern, Dale wondered why. Why him? Why Caroline or Annie? Why _not_ Annie?

A knock at his door startled Dale from his reverie, he got out of bed, not bothered in the slightest to answer his door in the blue pajama set he was so fond of, but curious as to the knocker. He’d turned in early that night, so he wasn’t entirely surprised to have a visitor, but, considering the hour, it could have been anyone.

It wasn’t.

Audrey Horne stood in his doorway, a plaid robe over a black nightgown, twisting the ends of her sleeves between restless fingers. She looked up at him, thoughtfully, as if she were considering something very serious.

“Hello Agent Cooper,”

“Audrey,” He replied, nodding his head deferentially.

“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

He narrowed his eyes, a bit suspicious but the nature of her movements convinced him that whatever it was, it was serious and they were friends. He’d once told her that he’d always be there to listen when she needed it, and he wasn’t about to go back on that promise. “Of course,”

As he stepped aside she brushed past him, a decidedly firm nature in her step. When Audrey reached the center of the room, she stopped and turned to face him, waiting as he closed the door and joined her.

“Would you like to sit?” He asked after a moment.

“I’ll stand, thank you,” Pointedly, she didn’t look at him, and didn’t speak, but something was obviously on her mind.

“Audrey,” Dale began, reaching out a hand towards her. “Whatever it is I-“

“I can’t lie to you, Agent Cooper,” She blurted, finally meeting his eyes.

He blinked rapidly. “Well I would hope you don’t feel like you need to lie-“

“I _can’t_ ,” She emphasized. “I physically cannot lie to you. I hoped you might notice on your own, you know, that you couldn’t lie to me either. But then you told me what happened to you before you came to Twin Peaks and I…” Her voice trailed away and Dale stood stock still in shock. Audrey turned from him, towards the window. “I thought I understood but then-“

“Annie,” The word left his lips a hushed whisper.

“I heard what happened today when I was at the Double R. And I decided that it was worth telling you,”

Dale sat down rather heavily on the bed. “Audrey, I-“ He started to protest, but he thought about all the times they’d spoken, the many discussions that they’d shared and how, anytime he’d needed to lie, whether it be as a result of the case or something else, he’d either flat out told her the truth, or worked his way around it without outright lying.

He’d never been able to lie to Audrey, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“I was going to lie that day at breakfast when you asked me about One-Eyed Jack’s. And I just couldn’t and that’s when I knew. I just kept telling you the truth and I _wanted_ to tell you the truth, always. I just knew that I could and that it would always be okay so I did and I’ve never been so happy and so sad about the same thing all at once!” Her words started to run together, quick with the force of her great emotion, while Dale sat, feeling hollow, on the bed.

All of a sudden, Audrey whirled in place and turned to look at him. “I don’t expect you to make good on your deal right now, but I love you all the same,” There was an air of finality in her words that caught at Dale’s heart. “I just thought you deserved to know,” She paused, as if waiting, but suddenly, before he could respond added “I’ll go now,” and made for the door.

“Wait!” Dale stood, clasping her about the upper arm and she was stopped in her tracks. They were close, nearly chest to chest and she was breathing heavily and Dale didn’t feel like he was breathing anymore at all. As he took in the sight of her flushed face, the teary sheen of her eyes, he brought a hand to her cheek, brushing it lightly with the back of his finger. “I love you too. What…what it means to have…to have a-a soulmate…” Uncharacteristically he stumbled over his words, the emotion thick in his throat. “Is to have ultimate trust and intimacy with another person. And it is the most…exquisite things two people in the whole world can share. And to share that with you, Audrey, would be an honor,”

A fierce look came to her eyes and before Dale could register what was happening, she'd stood on tiptoes, and pulled down on his shoulders so that she could press their lips together in what was (in her estimation at least) a long overdue kiss. A real, genuine kiss. Dale’s arms encircled her, clasping her to his form, their bodies molding to one another in harmony – everything he’d hoped for and more.

“I’m sorry, Audrey,” He muttered, pulling away from the kiss just enough to speak. “I’m sorry I didn’t see,”

“I couldn’t let you get away,” Her voice was low, and surprisingly rough to his ear, but her hands were soft on either side of his face. “But I’ll still understand, Agent Cooper, if…if it can’t be this way right now. I’ll understand,”

“You once said I was perfect,” Dale replied. “Obviously you believe that the be the truth. But I’m going to tell you right now, that I don’t deserve you,”

“That may be what you believe now, but someday, Agent Cooper, I’ll show you how wrong you are,”

“I think,” Dale pressed his forehead to hers. “That you should start calling me Dale,”

“You, Dale Cooper, are the perfect man for me. And that’s the truth,”


End file.
